This paper was developed by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority as a means of clarifying the objectives, philosophy and approach to Community Health Assessment (CHA) in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority catchment area. The paper introduces the concept of a comprehensive CHA strategy, and demonstrates how the role of CE is fundamental to the CHA strategy because of its capacity to build ongoing proactive engagement, and to make the CHA relevant, trusted and useful to the community. In the paper, an emphasis is placed on qualitative assessment: Rather than only exploring quantitative health indicators through the community health assessment, the paper makes a case for finding the meaning behind the numbers by asking the community to help explain the qualitative data generated by the assessment. This resource will be of most interest to regional health authorities, but also interests those examining the application of CE to community research.